D'Amato: We all may see eating meat as barbaric one day

Waterloo Region Record

I will never forget the time I walked into a slaughterhouse.

I was researching a series several years ago for this newspaper on the food we eat. By far the hardest piece of research was getting permission to visit the plant where animals were turned into meat. I was lucky to be granted access.

This was the Conestoga Meat Packers plant in Breslau, co-operatively owned by area farmers, the same place where animal-rights activists protested this week.

At first I saw a clean assembly line in a cool room where workers in white uniforms bantered as they cut the meat. I was shown features that were designed using the research of Temple Grandin, the well-known animal welfare expert, who understood that animals are spooked by flickering shadows or loud noises.

Then I was led to the killing area where the pigs waited for their final journey. They were making a ferocious noise that sounded like screams. I was told they were upset by the heat and humidity that day.

The pigs were led by plant workers through long tunnels, designed to keep them calm, and into a chamber filled with carbon dioxide. Less than a minute later, they were unconscious.

From there, they quickly became meat. Their throats were slit. The blood poured to a trough below, to be turned into fish food. A burst of flame burned off their bristles and the hides were cleaned until they were pale pink and smooth. They were cut open, gutted, chilled, cut up, packed and shipped.

The people in the Breslau plant were proud of their state-of-the-art equipment, and the care that they took to ensure no pig suffered needlessly.

And all that was true. But there is a difference between animal welfare and animal rights. Animal welfare says it’s acceptable for humans to use other animals for meat, clothing and medicine, as long as there is no unnecessary cruelty.

Animal rights, on the other hand, holds that humans have no right to interfere with the freedom or life of any animal, even if you treat it well while alive. All sentient beings cling to life.

Many people who believe in the rights of animals will not wear leather or eat any animal product. That’s why so many members of Guelph Pig Save, which organized the protest this week, are vegans.

Animal welfare was being enacted inside the Breslau plant, and animal rights was being advocated outside it this week.

That day in the plant, I crossed from one side to the other. Pigs are so close to humans that their pancreases were carefully being saved for medical research into human diabetes. I saw the pile of organs.

A few minutes later, in the holding room, I looked at the pigs being pushed into the tunnel and thought: “They are my brothers and sisters.”

All of a sudden, the easy denial that supermarkets offer — the individual portions wrapped in plastic and presented on a foam tray — fell away. I stopped eating meat.

More and more people are doing the same, in part because of videos about treatment of farm animals that are widely available online.

“If more people knew what the animals had to endure for their food, they would probably reconsider some of their consumer habits,” said Guelph Pig Save activist Mike Nicholson.

“I personally am for the entire abolishment of animal use altogether,” said Michael Sizer, a filmmaker from Cambridge who is making a documentary about the international Pig Save movement.

Nicholson and Sizer were part of a small number of protesters who stood outside the Breslau plant this week. They seemed to be on the fringe of public opinion.

But profound social changes often start small. In 100 years, eating meat may seem just as barbaric to our descendants as 19-century slavery seems to us today.